The invention relates to a system for controlling pre-ordered paper stock in reproduction machines such as copiers and printers, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for purging unwanted paper stock such as covers or inserts to maintain uniform completed reproduction sets.
As reproduction machines such as copiers and printers become more complex and versatile in the jobs they can do, the user interface between the machine and the operator or user, which in essence permits the dialogue between operator and machine, must necessarily be expanded if full and efficient utilization of the machine is to be realized. This is particularly important when a complex reproduction job requires a document set output in a book form that includes paper stock such as covers and inserts, and the machine must maintain the order of the stock regardless of the manner in which the stock is provided and regardless of paper jams that involve the stock.
Various prior art techniques are directed to the control of covers and inserts in reproduction machines, for example:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,626,156 to Baughman et al. discloses a finishing apparatus with cover inserter which has a separate tray for covers located near a finisher station. See col. 3, lines 20-23. A means is provided to allow a user to specify how many covers and where they go. See Col. 4, 18-22.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,439,865 to Kikuchi et al. discloses a copier sorter with memory for manually inserted covers or partition sheets wherein a manual insert point is provided for covers and inserts. See col. 5, lines 9-16. The copier is provided with a number of sorters. A jam recovery algorithm is provided which counts all completed copies and takes care of manually inserted covers. See col. 16, lines 40-51 and col. 17, lines 15-26.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,211,483 to Hannigan et al. discloses a copy production machine having job separation and collation capabilities which automatically inserts separation pages Kikuchi jobs. See col. 4, lines 30-40. Two paper supplies are provided which allow separation sheets to be automatically fed. See col. 10, lines 55-60.
One difficulty with the prior art systems is that even though there is automatic control of the placement of covers and inserts, an operator must determine the precise number of covers and inserts to be loaded into the cover and insert trays. The prior art controls are not capable of automatically responding to a supply of covers or inserts that is out of sequence with the required number and placement of covers and inserts in the completed sets.
Another difficulty with the prior art systems is the deficiency of the systems in recovering from a machine paper jam. In the prior art, manual intervention of the operator is required not only to clear the jam, but to manually re-order the covers and inserts to restore the operation to correctly completed sets with proper positioning of all covers and inserts.
It would be desirable to be able to automatically recover all the paper stock after the operator initially clears a paper jam without further operator intervention to re-order the placement and sequence of the covers and inserts. It would also be desirable for an operator to be able to pre-load a plurality of sets of pre-ordered stock of x number of inserts per set, and be able to pre-program the control to provide a given number greater or less than x of inserts for each finished reproduced set of documents without any further operator intervention to position or order the inserts within the finished sets.
It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide a new and improved technique that allows the operator to load arbitrarily sized sets of pre-ordered stock such as covers and inserts into a machine and causes the machine to maintain the order of the pre-ordered stock to provide uniform finished copy sets. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a machine control that automatically purges unwanted copy sheets and pre-ordered stock during a reproduction run after a jam clearance to maintain the order of the pre-ordered stock to provide uniform finished copy sets. Further advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the following description proceeds and the features characterizing the invention will be pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this specification.